Grandmother forced into prison cell with 40 men

Fior Pichardo de Veloz, 55, is suing after she was booked into jail as a man in 2013 when doctors assumed her hormone replacement pills meant she was transgender.

De Veloz is now suing the jail doctor and nurse for misclassifying her as a male without performing any physical examination.

In this horrifying case of misgendering, the grandmother was made to share a cell with 40 ‘leering’ men for over 10 hours reports Fox News.

She had flown into Miami from her home in the Dominican Republic to be at the birth of her grandchild, but things went sideways when police arrested her on suspicion of an old drug case she wasn’t aware of.

The 55-year-old was taken to Miami-Dade Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Centre for booking.

She was strip-searched in the booking process, which confirmed her as female, however the prison doctor and nurse classified her as a transgender woman with ‘male parts’.

They claim this was due to the hormone replacement pills she was taking at the time, however de Veloz was using the medication to help with her menopause symptoms.

The grandmother was then transferred to the Metro West Detention Centre, an all-male jail.

De Veloz repeatedly insisted she was a woman and didn’t belong there, but officers ignored her, Daily Mail reporting that one said, ‘Good luck if you’re alive tomorrow.’

She was so afraid to use the shared toilet that she wet herself, rather than expose herself.

It wasn’t until her family arrived over 10 hours later that the mistake was realised and De Veloz was finally removed from the cell.

But even then the ordeal wasn’t over, as she had to undergo an examination to confirm she was female – during which she says several male officers laughed at her and someone took a photo.

Initially de Veloz sued the medics for negligence but a judge threw the case out, saying jail staff were protected from such charges.

But a federal appeals court has this month reinstated her lawsuit against the jail doctor and nurse who booked her as a man.

‘Every reasonable prison officer and medical personnel would have known that… placing a female in the male population of a detention facility was unlawful,’ Judge Frank Hull wrote in a unanimous opinion.